I shared my 2026 running goals with a couple of dads last week, and their responses made me realize I’ve never told Warm Current readers the story about what drives me.
As I recently posted, I’m training to race the mile this summer. I want to see how fast this 58-year-old body can go. When I told these dads, they asked why.
“I want to find out what I’m capable of,” I said.
They pressed: “But why?”
Here’s the story I’ve told many athletes I’ve coached, and I alluded to it in my post about my goal, but there’s more to it, so I’ll share it here:
In 10th grade, around 1984, I ran a 4:36 mile during cross country practice. I ran cross country throughout high school but didn’t run track my last two years because I had issues with the coach. I walked away from track without ever knowing how good I could have been.
Fast forward twenty years. I’m 37, living in Boston, and I jump into the nearby “Marlborough Main Street Mile” as a side event during marathon training. At the gun, I found myself picking through runners who’d started too slowly. Within half a mile, I was leading the race.
I turned to the high school kids running near me: “Hey, let’s go. I’m not going to win this thing.”
Nobody came with me. With 400 meters left, I had a good lead on the second place runner, and I realized I’d better win the thing, or I’d feel embarrassed that I lost to some kid’s finishing kick. I crossed the line in 4:39.
That race changed me profoundly.
In twenty years, I’d lost only three seconds off my mile time. I felt I’d wasted the intervening decades not knowing what I was capable of. Would I have been a state champion miler? Could I have earned a college scholarship? With good collegiate coaching, could I have gone sub-4:00?
I’ll never know. And that knowledge is tough for me, all these years later.
But I decided that I would always know what I’m capable of from then on. That’s why I’m racing the mile this summer, more than twenty years later yet again. I need to know.
The dads with whom I shared this nodded in understanding.
But here’s what I didn’t tell them: It won’t make me happy.
I read a piece by Rustin Dodd in The Athletic recently about Olympic athletes and happiness. The research was pretty brutal: Bronze medalists are happier than silver. Gold medalists often crash hard emotionally after winning. We consistently overestimate how good achievement will feel and how long that feeling will last.
Psychologists call this “affective forecasting” – and humans are terrible at it. You think hitting your goal will change everything. But it won’t. You’ll still be you, still taking out the trash, still dealing with the same relationship dynamics.
Golfer Scottie Scheffler said in the story: “There’s a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and you get there, you get to No. 1 in the world, and they’re like, what’s the point?”
I know what will happen if I run well in July. I’ll feel great for some period of time. Then I’ll wonder if I could have gone faster. Or I’ll immediately start thinking about the next challenge.
And if I run poorly? I’ll be disappointed for a while, then move on.
Either way, the moment will pass. The race won’t fundamentally change who I am or how happy I feel day-to-day.
Just look at my 400 repeat times from last week, they’re not even close to where I would like to be. So, why bother? This shit ain’t easy, especially at my age! So…like the dad’s asked: Why?
Because psychologist Ed Diener’s research shows us that the frequency of positive experiences predicts happiness way better than the intensity of positive experiences. Twelve small moments of joy each day beat one big achievement.
Racing the mile matters to me. But what actually makes me happy isn’t just the race.
It’s the Tuesday morning run that feels good. The speedwork session where I notice I’m getting stronger. The moment I choose curiosity over resentment during a difficult conversation. The daily practice of showing up.
Those moments, I have noticed, lift my mood and improve my self esteem. And I’ll have those no matter what happens on race day.
What delivers happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things: showing up for training, working on my relationships, catching my own stories before they become resentment, choosing challenge over comfort.
The happiness is in the daily work of becoming the person I want to be. The race is just a marker along the way.
I hope today’s post provides some ideas on how to understand and appreciate your own process. The process of going through daily life. The process of noticing what really makes you feel good. The process of incorporating that awareness into your daily life.
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